The simple tendency to see people negatively indicates a greater likelihood of depression and various personality disorders.”

The conclusions come from a series of three studies.

In one people were asked to judge the positive and negative characteristics of three other people.

The more positively they judged those people, the more happy, enthusiastic, capable and emotionally stable they turned out to be themselves.

People who judged others more positively also turned out to be more satisfied with their own lives.

Set against this, those who judged others more negatively had higher levels of narcissism and antisocial behaviour.

The researchers even returned to the same people a year later and found the results were the same.

This suggests that what people’s ratings of others say about themselves remains stable over time.

Personality disorders are often diagnosed at least partly by how people view others, the authors write:

“…although narcissists may perceive others as being uninteresting or worthless, this may not reflect how they see themselves.

Similarly, individuals displaying behaviors typical of paranoid personality disorder may believe that others are malevolent and untrustworthy, even though they may not see themselves that way.

[…]

Machiavellianism is usually measured in part by asking individuals the extent to which they perceive a lack of sincerity, integrity, or selflessness in others’ actions, and narcissistic behavior is thought to be prompted in part by a belief that other people are inferior, uninteresting, and unworthy of attention.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Wood et al., 2010).

Related Posts

…and what your profile picture says about your personality. Social media profile pictures can reveal clues about personality, according to new research. Thousands of Twitter user’s pictures were included in the study, along with an analysis of their personality. Here…

Whether people widen or narrow their eyes gives you a huge amount of information about their emotions. When the eyes narrow it signals that someone is discriminating, research finds. This could mean they are angry, suspicious, aggressive or contemptuous. When…

Two personality traits are most strongly linked to walking quickly. Fast walkers are more likely to be extraverted, conscientious and open to new experiences. Naturally, though, with age, people tend to walk more slowly. However, those high in extraversion, conscientiousness…